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Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Be an Apprentice for 5 Months

If the following four items apply to you, then you might appreciate this post, which is about a special coaching program. Otherwise, if you don’t qualify for all four, there’s no need to read the rest.

You’d rather be self-employed than work for someone else.You recognize that you could significantly increase your income by improving your focus and efficiency.You care about following your path with a heart, so it’s important that you earn your money through meaningful, purpose-driven work that has a positive impact on people’s lives.You’re ready to invest in coaching from an experienced business coach for the next five months to achieve your goals faster, and you’re willing and able to pay a fair price for that help.

Again, if you don’t match all four of these, there’s no need to keep reading.

Since I’ve been teaching the “create and share value” approach for many years, I’ve heard from hundreds, if not thousands, of readers who’ve quit doing soulless work and started pursuing their paths with a heart. These ripples have now reached the point where I suspect that most of my readers don’t have corporate jobs anymore.

Consequently, most of the people I hear from today seem to be self-employed in some fashion, OR they’ve managed to find jobs they really like. I see the happy-with-my-job situation most often in the tech sector, where people find jobs at fast-moving, innovative companies and enjoy the ride.

The key is that people are saying no to mind-numbing jobs they’ve been doing mostly to make other people rich; they’re aligning with their inner truth instead of trying to suppress it. I know that this isn’t an easy path to follow, but it’s great to see these ripples happening more frequently than ever.

If you haven’t made this leap yet — i.e. if you’re still working at a job you hate — well… it’s becoming clear that your peers are waking up and leaving you behind. If you’re going to join them, you might want to step up sooner rather than later.

Getting onto the path with a heart is just the first step, however. Once you take that step, here are some of the problems you may encounter:

Not earning much money – Many new entrepreneurs have a rude awakening when they discover that it’s more challenging than they expected to CREATE and DELIVER value that a sufficient number people will pay good money for.Feeling isolated – Being the only heart-centered entrepreneur that you know can leave you feeling isolated and alone.Staying focused – With so many opportunities and so many distractions, how do you stay focused on your important core work and make real progress?Marketing – If hardly anyone knows who you are, how will you generate business?

You can solve these problems on your own. That’s possible. The downside is that you’ll probably give up before you make it work. And if you do make it work, it will likely take you many years to figure this out. What many new entrepreneurs think they can accomplish in one year actually takes them five years.

The shortcut is to get some direct mentoring, coaching, and accountability support from someone who’s already dealt with these problems and solved them.

Have you read the book Mastery by Robert Greene? If not, I highly recommend reading it. I can save you some time by summarizing that book in one sentence: If you want to become a master within your field, become an apprentice first.

Greene discovered that the great masters had great mentors. They had people to show them the ropes. Part of this involved sharing advice. Another part involved accountability. Mentors held their apprentices to higher standards and made sure they got their work done, especially during the phases where motivation can drop.

I encourage you NOT to make the mistakes I did when I first started on this path. For my first five years in business, I lost money and sank into debt. In 1994 I began with $20K in savings. By 1999 I had zero savings and $150K of debt.  It wasn’t till my sixth year — and after a bankruptcy — that I finally had my first profitable year. After that I was golden, and every year since then I’ve made money. I’ve been able to draw a six-figure salary from my business for many years now.

If you want to model my approach, you’ll have your first profitable year six years after you begin. How does that sound?

So either you can follow my path, which requires extraordinary patience and tenacity, or you can take a smarter and more efficient approach — the approach that Robert Greene recommends in Mastery. Get mentored, and save yourself years of ignorant and naive mistakes.

What did I do differently during that sixth year? I reached out for help and got advice and wisdom from other successful entrepreneurs. I finally swallowed my pride, connected with other people in my field who were doing better than I was financially, and I learned from them. That made all the difference in the world. Beginning with that shift, I not only made more money, but I also worked fewer hours.

As I write this, I’m sitting in a Starbucks near Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. I’m enjoying a spontaneous one-week trip here — for fun, for variety, and to mix things up. Less than 24 hours after feeling an urge to take this trip, I was at the airport awaiting my flight. During my first five years in business, I NEVER did this sort of thing. The irony is that by taking more time off, my income went way up. I now earn more money during one night’s sleep than I used to earn in a month of hard work.

It always seemed counter-intuitive to me that taking more time off can significantly boost my productivity. That was a lesson I learned from other entrepreneurs. In his book The Success Principles, Jack Canfield recommends taking 130-150 full days off each year. A day off means no work-related activities whatsoever from midnight to midnight. No business calls. No checking email. No social media. Is that much time off unfathomable to you? It was to me at one time. But stepping away from your business completely and coming back to it with a fresh perspective is one of many strategies that highly successful entrepreneurs use. Since I’m working today by writing this, today wouldn’t technically qualify as a full day off for me. I’m nowhere near 130 full days off per year (I do a lot of partial work days, like today), but I’m seeing surprisingly good results as I move further in that direction.

Would you like to learn more of these simple productivity secrets?

As it turns out, business coach Ryan Eliason is offering an in-depth coaching program to directly mentor people who are dealing with the challenges above. This is a very hands-on program with specific action steps for people who are ready to build a new business or improve an existing one.

Ryan’s 5-month (21-week) program includes:

21 weekly coaching lessons (typically a 75-90 minute lesson each time)21 weekly live group coaching calls (2 hours each)Step-by-step assignments to help you build and improve your businessMasterminding support with fellow entrepreneursAccess to Ryan’s personal Rolodex of recommended resources (this could save you months of research)24/7 access to Ryan’s private forum for Q&A and additional coachingForms and templates for goal setting, accountability, and tracking your progressSeveral additional high-value bonuses (see Ryan’s sign-up page for details)

Does it appeal to you to have an experienced entrepreneur and business coach hold your hand through the process of starting, building, and improving your own heart-centered business?

Since this is a group coaching situation, it’s a lot more economical than paying for one-on-one coaching. Solo coaching is great, but with group coaching you’ll save a lot of money. You’ll also enjoy the benefits of connecting with other entrepreneurs who are going through the program with you.

The coach behind the program is Ryan Eliason. I connected with Ryan through our mutual friend Ocean Robbins. Ryan and Ocean started off in the non-profit space together about 25 years ago — a couple of heart-centered guys wanting to change the world for the better.

Eventually Ryan became inspired by the idea of using business as a vehicle for creating positive change in the world. With the right business model — which can be a tricky thing to develop — Ryan learned that it’s possible to improve people’s lives AND enjoy a financially abundant lifestyle as well.

If you’ve been reading my blog for some time, then you know that this lesson is one that I had to learn as well. Ryan and I are on the same page in our understanding that financial abundance stems from creating and delivering real value to people. That’s a simple realization, but a profoundly practical one. In business it spells the difference between frustration and flow.

That said, creating value is only part of the path. Getting your value delivered is a whole different animal. Another step beyond that is learning how to create and deliver value that people will PAY GOOD MONEY for. And beyond that is encouraging those same people to REFER their friends, family, and co-workers to your business.

Again, you can figure all of this out on your own. Or you can save yourself several years and go the apprenticeship route. I recommend the latter. So does Robert Greene. Coaching is a high-value investment.

Your tuition for this coaching program is $895. Or you can do an installment plan for $197 per month for 5 months.

There’s a 100% money-back guarantee.

If you’re interested, visit Ryan’s sign-up page to review the details and get enrolled. Hundreds of people have already paid to enroll in this specific training. Those people will be your co-apprentices as you experience this program together… or they’ll be the people leaving you behind when you see the new business ventures they create without you.

So are you going to continue slogging it out on your own, or will you swallow your pride, admit you could use help from other entrepreneurs, and enjoy playing the role of apprentice for the next 5 months?

Registration closes on February 28th at 11pm Pacific time, so you have about a day and a half left to decide.

The training begins on March 1st. If you’re going to do this, then do it.

Update: Registration for this program is now closed, but you can still get on the waiting list to be notified if a spot opens up.


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